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Lawyers’ strike delays Costa Concordia hearing

An Italian court on Monday postponed to July 20th a hearing on the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster to rule on plea bargains requested by four crew members and one manager from the ship's operator.

Published: 8 July 2013 13:22 CEST
Lawyers' strike delays Costa Concordia hearing
A hearing to rule on plea bargains requested by five Costa Concordia staff has been delayed until July 20th. Photo: AFP

The delay was due to an eight-day national strike by lawyers, the ANSA news agency reported.

It comes a day before the separate trial of the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, which is due to start in the Tuscan city of Grosseto. That trial is also likely to be delayed just after its start on Tuesday to another hearing on July 17th.

The Costa Concordia crashed into the Tuscan island of Giglio last year with 4,229 people from 70 countries on board on the first day of a Mediterranean cruise in a disaster in which 32 people lost their lives.

Schettino has been charged with multiple manslaughter, abandoning the ship before all the people on board were evacuated and for causing environmental
damage.

Four crew members including the ship's Indonesian helmsman, as well as the head of ship owner Costa Crociere's crisis unit, have agreed plea bargains with the prosecution for short prison sentences. The plea bargains now have to be ruled on by a court.

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French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts

A French court has ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all its documents relating to efforts to combat racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

Published: 7 July 2021 10:03 CEST
French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts
Photo: Alastair Pike | AFP

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France last year, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fighting homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as “condoning crimes against humanity”.

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

The ruling was welcomed by the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of the groups that had taken the social media giant to court.

“Twitter will finally have to take responsibility, stop equivocating and put ethics before profit and international expansion,” the UEJF said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy bans users from promoting violence, or threatening or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender identity or disability, among other forms of discrimination.

Like other social media businesses it allows users to report posts they believe are hateful, and employs moderators to vet the content.

But anti-discrimination groups have long complained that holes in the policy allow hateful comments to stay online in many cases.

French prosecutors on Tuesday said they have opened an investigation into a wave of racist comments posted on Twitter aimed at members of the country’s national football team.

The comments, notably targeting Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, were posted after France was eliminated from the Euro 2020 tournament last week.

France has also been having a wider public debate over how to balance the right to free speech with preventing hate speech, in the wake of the controversial case of a teenager known as Mila.

The 18-year-old sparked a furore last year when her videos, criticising Islam in vulgar terms, went viral on social media.

Thirteen people are on trial accused of subjecting her to such vicious harassment that she was forced to leave school and was placed under police protection.

While President Emmanuel Macron is among those who have defended her right to blaspheme, left-wing critics say her original remarks amounted to hate speech against Muslims.

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